It’s not THE oven – the one that will bake 40 loaves at a time and allow us to trade as a proper bakery – but it’s AN oven, a lovely, shiny, new domestic oven that doesn’t need extractor hoods the size of a combine harvester and an electric system to rival the fusebox at Dungeness nuclear power station. It will be how we bridge the gap between now and when we’re ready to open properly.
But it’s really scary. I’m over the moon, naturally. Chuffed to naafi breaks, if we need a foodie phrase. We can move on, once there’s an oven. We can become what we’ve been working so hard to get to.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the expression “jam tomorrow.” It comes from the second world war, when rationing meant that people would have little in the larder but bread, and they’d motivate themselves with the promise of having some jam tomorrow. Hope can get you through really tough times, drive you on in the faith that tomorrow will be better than today.
Here, I’ve done jobs I hated, suffered and struggled, because these things needed to be done, and I was here. I’ve seen my job as a little bit like the first guys on the beach on D-Day, taking on the worst of it so that it’s easier for those who come after. Powered by the dream of Jam Tomorrow, of a brighter future, I’ve worked hard to get things going. Because people in Anfield deserve this bakery, even if the regeneration disaster has left them too tired and disillusioned to work for it.
But then tomorrow comes.
So now, as I wait for the oven, knowing that in a matter of hours, all that hope will be transformed into something else, I’m scared and sad. That thrilling, aching, desperate but glorious hope will be a thing of the past.
I’ve always felt, deep down, that my job here was to get things started, to use my “jam tomorrow” attitude to get us going, so that when the jam arrives, it will go to the people who really deserve it, but haven’t had the energy to work for it. I’ve slogged my guts out, knowing that I can be useful until the oven arrives. It has been more rewarding than anything I’ve ever done in my life, more challenging and exciting, more powerful and empowering. It has left me a changed person. But I’m not the baker, and I’m not the shop manager. I’m not the cleaner, or the architect, or the project manager. I’m just a volunteer who did what needed doing, when nobody else could do it.
So while for the project, this oven represents a brilliant, warm, tasty, jam-filled tomorrow, for me personally, I am mourning the loss of that delicious hope. I am handing over to the DOERS, and to the people who will come next.
Jammy bastards.